I spent a moment by a creek in Yosemite lightly sketching the light illuminating the trees and winding along the surface of the water – you can see the whispers of my pencil marks in lighter areas. Then I sat cross-legged on the sandy shore with my travel watercolors on one knee and my sketchbook […]

Regardless of where you are in your career, your skill level, or experience, there is something for everyone to take from the Game Developer’s Conference. I met a range of people from game developers and artists, to CEOs of major companies who are interested in how the game industry will impact their businesses, to recruiters […]

Happy New Year! Today I conducted my first annual review on 2013 and made plans for 2014, as suggested by blogger Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Noncomformity in his essay How to Conduct Your Own Annual Review. A personal Annual Review an alternative to New Year’s resolutions, and for good reason, only 8% of people keep their resolutions. […]

Gene Parola, the author of Lehua, Ka’ao a ka Wahine [Lehua, The story of a Woman]: A Hawaiian Noblewoman Comes of Age at a “Changing of the Gods.”, and Deborah Bond-Upson of Awesome Stories have commissioned me to paint Lehua. Above are my early thumbnails for the project. The final paintings will be included in a second print of […]

The overall shape, the silhouette, is the primary and most powerful way to identify an object, type of person, or creature. The ability to quickly pick out meaning from silhouettes, such as whether the thing we saw would help, nourish, or hurt us. Shapes are a kind of language that we learned first to identify, […]

Angelo Bronzino (1503-1572), who’s real name was Agnolo di Cosimo, was a Florentine Mannerist era painter. The painters of this era were known for breaking the established rules of Renaissance Europe painting and emphasizing artifice over nature. Stylistically, his work has an intellectual sophistication and seems to emphasize compositional tension and instability (such as the way […]

An animated .gif of the process. Notes: Armor was arguably most elegant in the late 15th century – it’s my favorite period for all things hammered into metal suits. Both Italian and German armor were popular (and used by both Spaniards and Britons). But German armor, like German clothing fashion at the time, was sleeker […]

Though born to American parents in 1856, John Singer Sargent began painting under a leading French artist named Carolus-Duran, who emphasized painterly freedom and study of the works of Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Sir Anthony van Dyke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the Spanish master Diego Velázquez. Though he painted and won acclaim for genre scenes and subject […]

I’m a freelance artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area and I work in traditional watercolor, ink, and digital paint. I’ve worked in industries like table-top games, book covers, and fine art. I’m passionate about visual storytelling because I believe that stories are even more powerful than facts; and as artists, we have the awesome power to inspire, build empathy, and lift people up. That’s why my mission is to create artwork that empowers you to reach your dreams!